After looking at reviews for a lot of these on Amazon, I am really cautious as to which brand I should go with here... It seems like SimpleTech and a few other brand names have really bad ratings with MANY people commenting on how unreliable these drives are.

Does anyone have any experiences with these? Pros, cons?

So far I've been looking at this one, because it's small and portable. Or is it better to go for one that has its own plug? What do you guys think?

I can't comment on other makes as I've used LaCie drives for a while now, both as Network Attached Storage for 24/7 availability and as USB drives which are just switched on for specific backup jobs. I've been pleased with them and, here in the UK at least, when I had a power brick fail after a couple of years LaCie replaced it free of charge.

The only caution I'd add is that at this price point having the units running permanently means that you shouldn't be shocked if the units fail after a few years. Unlikely, possibly, but data on such drives should always be duplicated elsewhere. But that applies equally well to data on a computer's internal drives as well. External drives are a good way to archive data or share data over a network but should never be the sole repository of that data in my view.

I have a LaCie Firewire on my Mac that has been great for 3 years, I also have 2 Seagate Freeagents USB on my windows box that have been good.

I have never had to use the warranty but a friend of mine got the Seagate Freeagent 1.5TB and did have to warranty a few weeks later for write failures. all said the Seagates have a 5 year warranty and are easy to deal with. I also do not keep them powered up all the time.

Bob, are you talking about the orange LaCie Rugged Hard Disks? I believe those come in 250GB, 320GB and 500GB...

The 500GB ones are priced about as much as the 1TB external drives by other brands. Hmm, they do look like they have some more protection than other ones though, but is it really worth it if I can get a TB of memory for a similar or a lower price?

Looks like a good choice to me, Burun. You can't go wrong with Western Digital. That's not a bad price either.

That's what I was thinking, they seem like a pretty trusted brand. I bought a Toshiba 200GB external a little over a year ago for about $200, so considering that I can get this for a little over $100 and it's 5x as much memory, I'm not complaining...

Yeah I've been buying WD and Seagate forever now and none have failed yet. A Hitachi drive came in my laptop, it failed. I replaced it with a larger capacity WD and it's been quieter and faster than before. And it will last longer too, I'm sure of it.

Also, I've got a 500GB MyBook from WD (it's another external from WD) and it's been running for about 3 years now. It's connected to my pc, so I wouldn't worry about keeping yours connected either. It spins down after about half an hour to an hour of inactivity and also shuts off automatically when the computer does. I almost never shut down my pc though. So even though it's been spinning up and down more than the average hard drive it's lasted for quite some time.

Bob, are you talking about the orange LaCie Rugged Hard Disks? I believe those come in 250GB, 320GB and 500GB...

No. There are some 1TB drives on this page which look close to your budget. But I wasn't recommending one brand over another, just giving you more options by saying that I've found LaCie products worth buying.

On another tack, if you are going to buy from Amazon would you consider helping to pay the bills here by starting your purchase by clicking on the Amazon link on this page. Amazon are one of our affiliate stores so while you pay the same price CameraLabs gets a small commission. And no, I don't get a cut as, like all the Moderators, I volunteer my time.

I bought this on Amazon before christmas:
http://www.amazon.com/Cavalry-1TB-Dual- ... pd_ys_iyr7So far, its very fast and quiet compared to my wd mybook 250gb. It also has ESATA support if you have that or want to upgrade for really fast transferspeeds. I have had no problems whatsoever so far.

On another tack, if you are going to buy from Amazon would you consider helping to pay the bills here by starting your purchase by clicking on the Amazon link on this page. Amazon are one of our affiliate stores so while you pay the same price CameraLabs gets a small commission. And no, I don't get a cut as, like all the Moderators, I volunteer my time.

Bob.

Ahh, I buy tons of stuff from Amazon, but I keep forgetting to do that. I shall correct this soon, though! And while we're on the topic, I can click that for anything that I buy through Amazon, right?

Thank you everyone for all the suggestions and ideas. I will keep them all in mind as I make my choice. The one brand I will avoid is SimpleTech, because they don't seem to be very reliable at all... I just wanted to make sure I'm getting a good brand name, because I wouldn't want to lose my wonderful photos and music...

...Ahh, I buy tons of stuff from Amazon, but I keep forgetting to do that. I shall correct this soon, though! And while we're on the topic, I can click that for anything that I buy through Amazon, right?...

Because I have Amazon.com bookmarked on top of Firefox inside this little "Smart Bookmarks Bar", what I'll do is I'll replace my Amazon link with the one that helps CameraLabs... This way I will ensure that I'm helping this wonderful website out!

I got one about 4years ago, and its working like a charm to date, its been used a lot. Movies going from one pc to another images, games etc you name it its there! I can highly recommend it

I doubt the drive is made by HP. If you open it up and see what the sticker says it should show a different brand.

Also, thanks for pointing out that Amazon link, I also buy a lot of stuff off Amazon and I'll be sure to click it in the future. Wish I had known about that earlier, I spent some money over the holidays.